m&a integration planning the integration of an acquired companys legal department
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A General Counsel\’s Guide to integrating an acquired company\’s legal departmentTRANSCRIPT
November 2011
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BY FRANK FLETCHER AND KEITH E. GOTTFRIED
You are the general counsel of BiggerCo, a publicly-held
software and services company with annual revenues of
$600 million based in the heart of California’s Silicon
Valley. Almost three months ago, BiggerCo agreed to
acquire SmallerCo, another publicly-held software and
services company located in Raleigh, N.C., pursuant to
an all-cash, one-step merger transaction that merges
SmallerCo with, and into, BiggerCo. SmallerCo is
relatively comparable in size to BiggerCo, having about
the same revenues and an almost equal number of
employees. While the transaction has been structured
as a merger of equals, there is no doubt that BiggerCo is
acquiring SmallerCo and that BiggerCo’s management
team will be running the combined company. Among
the many attractions in buying SmallerCo were its very
significant international operations, as well as its large
government business. SmallerCo’s largest customer is
the US government. In contrast, BiggerCo has not, to
date, been successful in expanding overseas or in selling
to the US government.
M&A Integration ——
Planning the
Integration of an Acquired Company’s Legal Department
ACC Docket 57 November 2011
ACC Docket 58 November 2011
more than their SmallerCo counterparts,
partly due to the increased cost of liv-
ing in Silicon Valley. While BiggerCo
requires all of its outside counsel to
agree to its law firm retention agreement
and related outside counsel policies,
SmallerCo has no such process in place
and generally just executes whatever
engagement letter is sent to it by its law
firm. Having just completed a lengthy
“beauty contest” process to reduce the
number of law firms it uses, BiggerCo
now uses only a handful of law firms
for most of its corporate, litigation and
intellectual property work, and some of
these firms were required to agree to
either alternative fee arrangements or
steep discounts off their standard billing
rates, in exchange for being designated a
“preferred firm.” In contrast, SmallerCo
uses over a dozen law firms and has
no discount or alternative fee arrange-
ments in place with any of them. All of
BiggerCo’s securities compliance and
corporate governance work is done by
outside counsel, and you had not previ-
ously contemplated bringing that work
in-house due to the absence of appropri-
ate in-house resources. As such, you are
pleasantly surprised to learn that SmallerCo has been able
to bring all this work in-house and you are very impressed
with the in-house attorneys that service these areas. You
are equally surprised to learn that, notwithstanding how
much government contracts work is done by SmallerCo, it
does not have any in-house government contract attorneys
and that all of the government contracts work is serviced
by outside counsel. With respect to technology, all of the
attorneys at BiggerCo have company-paid Blackberries® or
iPhones.® The attorneys at SmallerCo don’t have any such
devices provided by the company. While BiggerCo uses a
state-of-the-art document management system that allows
all of the attorneys in the legal department to have access
to each other’s documents, no such system has ever been
deployed at SmallerCo.
As you begin to tackle your legal department integration
plan, you notice that, unlike many of the projects you take
on, this one seems not to have any precedent or canned
checklists to look to. You check with your outside counsel
and none of them have any sample M&A integration plans
for a legal department. It seems impossible to believe that,
with all the M&A transactions that get done in Silicon
Valley and beyond, nobody has ever sat down and prepared
When the acquisition of SmallerCo
was first announced, many investors
thought that BiggerCo had overpaid for
SmallerCo. In response to that concern,
BiggerCo’s stock got walloped. To ad-
dress investor’s concerns, BiggerCo’s
CEO has been spending a lot of time on
the road touting the expected benefits of
the acquisition. Nevertheless, investors
remain skeptical and are particularly
concerned with whether BiggerCo has
the ability to successfully integrate the
two companies.
With the closing of the acquisition of
SmallerCo now visible on the horizon,
BiggerCo’s CEO has asked each of his
senior executives, including you, to be
ready at the next meeting of the execu-
tive leadership team to present detailed
plans for integrating the applicable
operations of SmallerCo into their
functional group, post-closing. Many
of the functional groups at BiggerCo,
including finance, accounting, market-
ing, product management, sales, IT and
human resources, have been working on
their M&A integration plans for months.
Given that these other functional groups
have not been consumed for the past
three months with executing the acquisition of SmallerCo,
they have had ample time to review the applicable func-
tional group at SmallerCo, and contemplate and develop a
detailed integration plan.
As your integration plan will be due shortly, you can’t
put it off any longer. Where to start? You decide that to
develop your integration plan you must first assess the situ-
ation. The majority of SmallerCo’s attorneys are based in
Raleigh, with several attorneys based overseas to support
SmallerCo’s international operations. BiggerCo has all
of its attorneys based in Silicon Valley and has never had
attorneys based overseas. SmallerCo’s GC will move into
the organizational framework at BiggerCo, but an exact
role has not been identified, though it most likely will be
some type of corporate development or corporate affairs
role. While the BiggerCo legal department did not use such
titles as “assistant general counsel” or “associate general
counsel,” all of the attorneys at SmallerCo (other than the
GC) had the title “assistant general counsel” or “associ-
ate general counsel.” In addition, there is significant pay
disparity between attorneys in BiggerCo’s legal depart-
ment compared to those in SmallerCo’s legal department,
with the BiggerCo attorneys being paid almost 20 percent
FRANK FLETCHER is the general counsel of Nero AG, a developer of platform-neutral software technology for editing and managing video, music, photos
and other multimedia, which is headquartered in Karlsbad, Germany, with subsidiaries in Hangzhou, China; Yokohama, Japan; and Glendale, California. Fletcher is responsible for all aspects of the company’s worldwide legal function, including mergers and acquisitions, software licensing, patents, trademarks, antipiracy and litigation. Prior to joining Nero, he was a member of the products and technologies law group at Sun Microsystems, where he served as chief counsel for the CPU manufacturing, testing and validation groups, as well as the global business services group. He can be contacted at [email protected].
KEITH E. GOTTFRIED is a partner in the Washington, DC office of Blank Rome LLP. He concentrates his practice primarily on mergers and acquisitions, corporate
governance, shareholder activism, securities regulation, NYSE and Nasdaq compliance, and general corporate matters. Over the course of his career, Gottfried has worked on a number of high-profile mergers and acquisitions across a broad range of industries and sectors. Prior to rejoining Blank Rome, he was the general counsel of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, a position to which he was appointed by President George W. Bush and unanimously confirmed by the US Senate. Previous to that, Gottfried was the general counsel of Borland Software Corporation in Cupertino, California. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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DISCOVERY & DISPUTE SERVICES CENTER
ACC Docket 60 November 2011
are currently not being actively used — that can be poten-
tially recycled for the acquired company’s products. There
may also be numerous “leaky faucets” in the acquired com-
pany’s legal department that can be quickly turned off to
produce significant cost savings. Obvious areas here would
be franchise taxes for unused subsidiaries, trademark
maintenance fees for marks that will never be used again,
outside counsel who are being inefficiently managed and
retained at much higher rates than what the acquirer typi-
cally pays, license fees for software that is not being used,
retainers for consultants who are not being used, and fees
for warehouse space to store files that is not being used.
In addition, a thoughtful integration plan could uncover
lawsuits and other claims where there is an opportunity —
that theretofore had not been fully explored — to expedi-
a detailed plan for how to combine the legal departments
of two public companies. The more you think about it, the
more issues come to mind, and there will be no shortage of
issues to consider and address in planning the integration.
Clearly, having a detailed roadmap to guide you would
have been extremely helpful.
This scenario may seem familiar to many of you. Like
the fictional in-house counsel depicted above, we also be-
lieve that a detailed roadmap for planning and executing on
the integration of an acquired company’s legal department
would be very useful. In our experience, the integration of
an acquired company’s legal department is rarely given the
thought and attention it deserves. There are many reasons
for this, including that a legal department is often viewed
as a cost center, and the development of a well-executed
integration plan could be expensive in the near-term. In ad-
dition, as noted above, a public company’s legal department
is generally not lacking for projects to keep it busy, if not
consumed, and there is little “down time” or even incen-
tive to be strategic. How likely is a legal department to get
approval for additional headcount, or a budget to plan and
execute an M&A integration? We believe that the lack of
attention to developing effective strategies for integrating
an acquired company’s legal department is extremely short-
sighted and causes many companies to miss the numerous
opportunities that may be presented by the acquired com-
pany. For instance, a thoughtful integration plan may, with
regards to the review of the acquired company’s intellec-
tual property, uncover inventions that are still patentable.
A thoughtful integration plan may also uncover unused
trademarks that have been extremely well-protected — but
ACC Docket
• Due Diligence and Your M&A Success Story
(Sept. 2011). www.acc.com/docket/success-story_sep11
InfoPAKSM
• Organizational Effectiveness: The New Imperative
for Developing a World-Class Legal Department
(July 2011). www.acc.com/infopaks/wcld_jul11
Top Tens• Top Ten Things to Do When Your
Company Is Acquired (Aug. 2011).
www.acc.com/topten/comp-acquired_aug11
• Top Ten Best Practices for Merger Transactions
from a Litigator’s Perspective (Aug. 2011).
www.acc.com/topten/merger-trans_aug11
Presentation • Adding Value: Strategic Planning and
Demonstrating Success (May 2011).
www.acc.com/strat-planning_may11
Article • Mergers and Acquisitions (Fraser Milner Casgrain
LLP) (June 2010). www.acc.com/m&a-fraser_jun10
ACC has more material on this subject on our website.
Visit www.acc.com, where you can browse our resources
by practice area or search by keyword.
ACC Extras on… Integration of an Acquired Company’s Legal Department
The lack of attention
to developing effective
strategies for integrating
an acquired company’s legal
department is extremely
short-sighted and causes
many companies to miss the
numerous opportunities
that may be presented by
the acquired company.
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ACC Docket 62 November 2011
tiously resolve the matter, which could result in a signifi-
cant reduction in legal fees being paid to outside counsel.
There may even be cases where the acquired company can
reap a very attractive settlement payment from a defendant,
but in the midst of the acquired company’s sales process,
no one had been willing to engage with the defendant and
its counsel to work out the mechanics of a settlement.
Based on our M&A experiences, and particularly,
reflecting back on our past experiences in integrating an
acquired company’s legal department and being integrated
into a acquirer’s legal department, we have prepared an
extensive list of issues that should be considered and ad-
dressed sooner rather than later (hopefully, prior to the
closing of the acquisition), as you begin to plan the integra-
tion of an acquired company’s legal department with that
of the acquirer, thus ensuring a smooth transition and a
successful integration.
Gathering background1. How do the legal needs of the acquired company
compare to the legal needs of the acquirer?
2. How will the legal needs of the acquired
company be satisfied moving forward?
3. Have you received feedback from your
client groups regarding their anticipated
post-closing legal support needs?
4. What are the expectations of the acquirer’s
CEO in terms of headcount and post-
acquisition budget for the legal department?
Integrating the GC of the acquired company5. Can the acquired company’s GC be expected to
accept a role reporting to the acquirer’s GC, or
would the acquired company’s GC prefer operating
in a different department such as Corporate
Development or HR? Does the former GC have
knowledge and skills necessary for such a transition?
6. Do you know what role the GC of the target
envisions for himself at the merged company? Does
the former GC expect a dual-GC type of role?
7. Does the former GC have job-title expectations
(e.g., deputy GC, AGC or GC of subsidiary)?
Other legal department personnel8. Will the legal department personnel of
the acquired company be retained?
9. Will there be a need to relocate legal department
personnel from the acquired company’s
offices to the acquirer’s headquarters?
10. Is it necessary for the acquirer to have lawyers
at multiple locations domestically? Overseas?
1. Execute poorly on the M&A integration or
do not complete it on a timely basis.
2. Pay insufficient attention to customers (and employees)
as the kinks in the integration are worked out.
3. Miss the landmines in due diligence.
4. Overpay.
5. Forget what it is you are buying (particularly in
a services business when it is people).
Five Ways to Doom an M&A Transaction
1. Legal personnel
2. Knowledge management
3. Budget and forecast
4. Technology support
5. Invoice management
6. Records retention
7. Outside counsel management
8. Litigation management
9. SEC reporting
10. Corporate governance
11. International operations
12. Subsidiary clean-up
13. Patents, trademarks and other intellectual property
14. Labor and employment
15. Stock option and employee benefit plans
16. Forms and templates
17. Contract management
18. Product licensing and sales
19. Real estate (owned and leased)
20. Regulatory environment
21. Government sales and relations
22. Public relations
23. Marketing
24. Insurance
25. Corporate policies
Twenty-Five Key Areas of Focus for Legal Department Integration
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ACC Docket 64 November 2011
21. Is there an attorney at the acquirer with a necessary
core competency who is expected to leave the
acquirer in the near future and who may be replaced
with an attorney from the acquired company?
22. Have you obtained the bios for each
attorney from the acquired company,
including title and salary history?
23. Have you thought about an on-boarding
process for the new attorneys? Will they all be
brought to the parent HQ for this process? Or
is an off-site for all attorneys warranted?
24. Is the integration an opportunity to
upgrade the skills and competencies of
your legal department with more qualified
attorneys from the acquired company?
25. Are there any state bar issues? What is the state
bar membership status of each new attorney
being added to the team? Can each new attorney
produce a certificate of good standing in every
jurisdiction in which they are admitted?
26. If you are going to be relocating attorneys
to California, can these attorneys obtain
in-house counsel registration?
27. Have all legal department personnel from the
acquired company been briefed on the policies
and procedures of the acquirer’s legal department
(i.e., outside counsel retention, issuance of
legal opinions, bar admission requirements,
attorney conduct rules, CLE policies, etc.)?
28. Do you have a standard email signature
that you require your attorneys to use?
Has this been communicated to the
acquired company’s attorneys? ∑
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11. What core competencies are required by the
acquirer’s legal department, and do any of the
acquired company’s legal department personnel
fill a void in the acquirer’s legal department?
12. Is there a need to hire additional legal department
personnel as a result of the acquisition?
13. Have job descriptions been prepared and
circulated to Human Resources for approval?
14. Is there any pay disparity between attorneys at the
two companies that will need to be addressed?
15. Did there seem to be an inordinate
number of promotions or raises prior
to the closing of the transaction?
16. Do you have a current organizational chart for
the acquired company’s legal department? Do
you have a current organizational chart for your
own legal department? Have you developed an
organizational chart for the merged company?
17. Have you completed an assessment of the skill
sets for attorneys at each legal department
to determine which skill sets are in very
short supply and which are redundant?
18. Have you identified any “superstar” attorneys
on either side with skill sets you can’t
afford to lose? Have you done anything to
make sure you keep these individuals?
19. Are there any competencies in the target
company’s legal department that are currently
being underutilized (e.g., an ex-Big Law
attorney currently doing licensing who could
be supporting future M&A projects)?
20. Is the acquirer missing any core competencies
in its legal department (e.g., open source,
export compliance, FCPA, patents, etc.)?
Have you completed an
assessment of the skill
sets for attorneys at each legal
department to determine
which skill sets are
in very short supply
and which are redundant?
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Knowledge management29. How do you assess and preserve the knowledge of the
acquired company’s personnel, including those in the
legal department, before they leave the company?
Budget and forecast30. Has the legal department’s budget and forecast
been revised to reflect the consolidation with the
legal department of the acquired company and the
resulting additional expenses, including, but not
limited to, additional outside counsel fees, additional
attorney and legal support personnel, additional
costs for software licenses and technology support
(Blackberries®, cell phones, computers, etc.),
additional costs for malpractice insurance, additional
overhead allocation, additional travel and related
expenses, and additional bar and association dues?
Technology support31. Does your IT department understand the
needs of the merged legal department?
Are any additional servers required?
32. Does either company’s legal department use
matter management, document management
and/or calendaring software that will need to be
rolled out to the other? Do you need to purchase
any additional software licenses or seats?
33. Does the acquired company have better software
license terms that can be leveraged by the acquirer?
34. Should all the computers in the acquired company’s
legal department be scanned for documents
that can be imported into the acquirer’s legal
department document management system?
35. Does each of the acquired company’s attorneys have a
personal digital assistant or cell phone paid for by the
company (e.g., Blackberry®, iPhone®, Android®, etc.)?
Invoice management36. How does the acquired company’s legal
department process and approve its invoices?
37. Have all outside counsel to the acquired
company been advised that, going forward, all
invoices for legal services should be sent to the
attention of the acquirer’s legal department?
38. Have all outside counsel to the acquired
company been requested to notify the acquirer’s
legal department of all outstanding invoices
as of a fixed date so that a proper accrual
can be made of legal expenses payable?
39. Are any of the outstanding invoices items
that are reimbursable pursuant to any
indemnification or insurance arrangements?
40. What will be the approval process for paying the
outstanding legal invoices of the acquired company?
Records retention41. Will all of the acquired company’s files be kept in
an existing location or moved to a new location?
42. Has the acquired company’s records retention
policy been recently updated and distributed
to the acquired company’s employees?
43. Are processes in place to ensure that, with
respect to open litigation matters, relevant
records are being preserved? Is there any need
to issue a document preservation memo(s) in
connection with acquired company litigation?
44. Is additional secure file storage capacity necessary?
45. Have all the acquired company’s files and
records been scanned and backed up as part
of the acquirer’s disaster recovery plans?
46. Do you know where all the acquired
company’s files are?
47. Are there files in the possession of the acquired
company’s outside counsel that should be retrieved?
48. What is the timetable for implementing the acquirer’s
records retention policy at the acquired company?
Combining best practices49. Does the acquired company’s legal
department use some best practices that
can be adopted by the acquirer?
Outside counsel management50. Have you received a list of outside counsel
employed by the acquired company, the tasks
that they handle and the current billing rates?
51. Have you received copies of all outside counsel
engagement letters for all active matters?
52. Have all outside counsel to the acquired
company, domestic and foreign, been
notified about the acquisition?
53. Have all outside counsel to the acquired
company been provided with a copy of the
acquirer’s outside counsel guidelines?
54. Has a decision been made as to which of
the acquired company’s outside counsel
will continue to be retained?
55. Have all outside counsel to the acquired company
that will continue to be retained been asked to
sign revised engagement letters with the acquirer
that includes the acquirer’s standard engagement
letter addendum and outside counsel guidelines?
ACC Docket C7 November 2011
68. Have you received litigation budgets and
forecasts for all ongoing matters involving the
acquired company, including a calendar of court
appearances, deposition schedules, etc.?
69. Are continuances or postponements necessary so
that you can get your arms around the matters
or make changes in assigned counsel?
70. Are all litigation matters appropriately described
in the disclosure schedule to the acquisition
agreement? Are there other claims or contingencies
that have “come out of the woodwork” since
closing that were not appropriately disclosed in the
disclosure schedule to the acquisition agreement?
71. Have you requested of all court filings for
ongoing litigation and other related materials
for inclusion in the acquirer’s legal department
files and for distribution as required (insurance
companies, outside counsel, experts, etc.)?
72. Have you designated a point person
for each litigation matter?
73. Have the insurers been appropriately
notified of all pending litigation to the extent
required by the relevant policies?
74. Have you reviewed all current insurance
policies for applicable coverage?
75. Have you requested a letter from the insurance
carrier delineating coverage terms and limits?
SEC reporting76. Does the description of the business in the
Annual Report on Form 10-K need to be
revised to reflect the acquired business?
77. Do any changes need to be made to the risk factors or
the forward-looking statement safe harbor factors?
78. Are there additional agreements that need
to be included as exhibits to the Form 10-K
(material contracts, employment agreements,
leases, credit agreements, the acquisition
agreement, new employee benefit plans, etc.)?
79. Will any of the officers or employees of
the acquired company be deemed an
executive officer of the acquirer for whom
Section 16 filings will be necessary?
80. Are there any new directors of the acquirer
as a result of the acquisition for whom
Section 16 filings will be necessary?
81. Are there any Section 16 officers that will be
departing from the acquirer or who will remain
with the acquirer but will no longer be deemed
Section 16 officers? If yes, have “Section 16 exit
memos” been prepared and distributed to them?
56. With respect to outside counsel that will not
be retained going forward, has the acquirer
requested that all of the acquired company’s
files be delivered to the acquirer?
57. Have all outside counsel been asked to provide
a list of all matters that they are currently
working on for the acquired company?
58. Are there matters being handled by outside counsel
that can be handled more efficiently and effectively
by in-house counsel? Are those matters capable of
being transitioned from a practical perspective? If
it would be more effective to transition the matter
to in-house counsel, are additional resources
needed in-house prior to such transition?
59. In the acquisition, are you acquiring any
new skill sets that would allow certain tasks
previously performed for the acquirer by
outside counsel to be brought in-house?
60. Have all outside counsel been asked to provide
budgets for open litigation matters that they
are working on for the acquired company?
61. Is there an opportunity to consolidate some of
the matters being handled by outside counsel to a
smaller number of firms? Does the acquirer need
multiple firms to process trademark filing requests?
Does the acquirer need multiple counsel in foreign
jurisdictions? Does the acquirer need multiple
counsel to support the human resources group?
62. Can the consolidation of outside counsel
be leveraged to obtain cost savings?
Litigation management63. Has a list of all outstanding litigation matters
to which the acquired company is a party
been prepared and compared with what
was listed in the disclosure schedule?
64. Have all outside counsel representing the acquired
company in litigation matters been notified of the
acquisition, and the new protocols for consultation
and approval of all actions in the litigation?
65. Has the estimate for the costs to resolve the pending
matters changed since the transaction closed?
66. Are there litigation matters that can be easily
settled or otherwise disposed of? Should
settlement be considered? Are changes in
litigation counsel necessary? Are changes
in litigation strategy necessary?
67. Will any of the pending litigation matters need to be
disclosed in either the acquirer’s Quarterly Report
on Form 10-Q or Annual Report on Form 10-K?
102. Have actions by unanimous consent been
prepared to change the officers and directors?
103. Has a review been undertaken to determine which
subsidiaries to retain and which to eliminate?
104. Are any of the acquired subsidiaries “significant
subsidiaries” for SEC reporting purposes?
105. Are any of the acquired subsidiaries subject to
open federal, state, local or foreign tax audits?
106. Are any of the acquired subsidiaries parties to any
debt instruments, or are any of their assets pledged?
107. Has the par value of the subsidiaries’ shares
been reviewed to determine whether excessive
franchise taxes are being incurred?
108. Are there domestic subsidiaries that need to
be merged out of existence or dissolved?
109. Are there subsidiaries that cannot be merged
out of existence or dissolved because of open tax
audits, IP ownership or contractual reasons?
110. Have all the corporate minute books been
retrieved and are they all up to date?
111. Are all the acquired subsidiaries in good standing
and are they qualified to do business in the
jurisdictions where they need to be so qualified?
Patents112. Does there need to be coordination between
the patent procedures at each company [e.g.,
the invention disclosures, patent committees,
patent payments to inventors (upon
submission of patentable idea, upon approval
of patentable idea by the patent committee,
upon completion of the patent application,
upon issuance of the patent, etc.)]?
113. Do you have a current list of patents
for the acquired company?
114. How will the patents of the acquired company
be docketed and maintained (i.e., by an existing
patent service provider or moved to a new service
provider)? In examining the preceding, do you
recognize any tasks that can be brought in-house or
consolidated for a third-party service provider, such
as management of maintenance fees for patents?
115. Has a patent audit been conducted of the acquired
company to determine whether there are additional
inventions to patent that are not time-barred?
116. Have your patent attorneys sat down with the key
inventors at the acquired company and discussed
the patent philosophy of your company?
117. Is there any opportunity to license the
acquired company’s patents and develop
a revenue stream from such patents?
82. Do the processes that have been implemented
pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act
need to be revised to address the acquired company?
83. Will there be any changes to the list of named officers
in the acquirer’s annual meeting proxy statement?
Corporate governance84. Will additional sub-certifications be needed to
ensure compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act?
85. Are there any changes to any of
the board committees?
86. Are there any changes to the schedule
of board or committee meetings?
International operations87. Are additional legal personnel
needed in overseas locations?
88. Do any of the acquired company’s trademarks
need to be registered in overseas locations?
89. Are any additional foreign qualifications needed?
90. Are there redundant foreign subsidiaries
or other legal entities as a result of the
acquisition that need to be merged out?
91. Are any changes needed to either
party’s transfer pricing policies?
92. Will there be any exchange control
issues going forward?
93. Are there any additional permits
or approvals to obtain?
94. Should a compliance audit be performed
to assess any potential FCPA issues?
95. Are there opportunities to obtain any governmental
subsidies or incentives from the host government?
Export controls compliance96. Has a review been undertaken to determine
whether any additional filings need to be done
with the US Department of Commerce to export
the products of the acquired company?
97. Are additional export licenses needed?
Subsidiary cleanup 98. Do you have a list of corporate entities
owned by the acquired company?
99. Do you have an up-to-date list of
your own corporate entities?
100. Have all of the acquired subsidiaries been entered
into the acquirer’s subsidiary tracking database?
101. Have you determined who will serve as the
directors of the foreign subsidiaries? Have you
checked residency/nationality requirements?
ACC Docket C9 November 2011
132. Have you applied for all potential “cyber-
squatting” domain names relating to
the acquired company’s products?
133. Have you coordinated on how you would
like splash screens to appear on the acquired
company’s websites? Is there a click-
through to the merged company’s site?
Labor and employment134. Should all of the acquired company’s employees
be required to execute new offer letters?
135. Do the employees of the acquired company
need to sign new confidentiality and
assignment of inventions agreements?
136. Have all of the acquired company’s
employees been advised of the acquirer’s
employee policies and procedures?
137. Have you coordinated with HR on any
potential reductions in force (e.g., severance
agreements, employment law compliance,
collective bargaining issues)?
138. Have WARN Act notices been given?
139. Have severance agreements been drafted?
140. How can severance liabilities be minimized?
141. Have all employment agreements with
severance provisions been reviewed?
142. Should the legal department plan an
employment law compliance training session
for the managers of the acquired company?
143. Are there any collective bargaining organizing
initiatives currently underway?
144. Are the employees of the acquired company
covered by any collective bargaining agreements?
When are such agreements next up for renewal?
Stock option and employee benefit plans145. Are any new stock option plans being
implemented to rollover the stock options of
the employees of the acquired company?
146. Are there any new incentive compensation plans
(ICP) or management by objectives (MBO) plans
that are being implemented for the new employees?
147. Have the appropriate Form S-8 and
other filings been made with the SEC
and the applicable stock exchanges?
148. Have the stock option plans been adapted, and
the requisite approvals obtained, so that stock
options can be issued to employees overseas?
Use of forms and templates149. Have you reviewed the acquired company’s
template agreements and attendant rules of use?
118. Is there any patented technology at the acquired
company that might cause you to change a
current IP litigation strategy, or vice versa, is
there any patented technology at the acquirer
that can be leveraged in any IP litigation
that the acquired company is a party to?
119. Does the transaction have any effect on
any patent license agreements that the
acquired company is a party to?
120. Does the acquisition open the door to
examining a patent licensing strategy?
121. Does the acquired company have procedures
to examine patentable ideas prior to release
of new products? Would this be a good
opportunity to implement such procedures?
Trademarks and other intellectual property122. Has the acquirer’s list of trademarks
and service marks been updated?
123. Has a decision been made as to which brand
names, trademarks and service marks of the
acquired company will continue to be used?
124. Are additional registrations required,
domestically and/or overseas?
125. Are there opportunities to restructure the
ownership of the acquired company’s intellectual
property to effect a more tax-efficient structure?
126. Are revisions to the acquirer’s inter-
company agreements required?
127. Are there older trademarks at either company
that can be re-used or expanded such that prior-
use or registration rights can be leveraged?
Website128. If the acquired company is going to continue with
its stand-alone website for a transitional period,
have the copyright and trademark notices, privacy
policy and terms of use been revised to be in
accordance with the acquirer’s approved template?
129. Have all the country-specific websites of the
acquired company been reviewed to determine what
changes will need to be made to the copyright and
trademark notices, privacy policy and terms of use?
130. If the acquired company was a public company,
have the investor relations and corporate
governance links on the acquired company’s
website been re-linked to the acquirer’s investor
relations and corporate governance pages?
131. Are there web-linking agreements that
need to be updated to reflect that the links
will now be to the acquirer’s website?
163. Has a timeline been established for converting
all of the acquired company’s product
license agreements and sales agreements
to the new forms and templates?
164. Have the forms been adapted for
use in new foreign locations?
165. Have the sales folks been briefed on the legal
terms that they are not to negotiate without the
approval of the acquirer’s legal department?
166. Are new click-through agreements needed for
the merged company’s software products?
167. With the acquisition, is it realistic to form
a group at the merged company to have
paralegals or contract managers handle
repetitive form agreements or processes, such
as NDAs, evaluation agreements or open source
reviews, or new product release approvals?
Real estate (owned and leased)168. Are any leases being terminated?
169. Do any of the leases to which the acquired
company is a party to require notice or consent
to assignment or change of control?
170. Are any subleases being contemplated with respect
to redundant office space of the acquired company?
171. Are any leases being renegotiated?
172. Are facilities being consolidated,
domestically or overseas?
173. Are there “change of address” notices, which
are required to be sent to any governmental
authorities, domestically or overseas?
174. Are there opportunities to minimize
real estate or transfer taxes?
175. In reviewing the consolidated property
portfolio, are there opportunities to
sell or sublease properties?
Regulatory environment176. Does the acquired company place the
acquirer in a new regulatory environment
where, for the first time, it is subject to
compliance with a statute or regulation that
heretofore it did not have to comply with?
177. Are there notices to be filed in order to
comply with new regulatory requirements?
178. Does the acquirer’s legal department have
sufficient competency to ensure the acquirer’s
compliance with the new regulatory regime?
179. Is the nature of the regulatory regime such that an
additional full-time in-house person is necessary,
or is it such that outside counsel is sufficient?
150. Have you reviewed the acquired company’s
templates to determine if key provisions
(warranties, limitation of liability,
indemnification, rights in derivative IP, etc.)
comply with the policies of the acquirer?
151. Have you provided the acquired company’s
attorneys with a copy of your standard
NDA(s) and the related rules of use?
Contract management152. Have the disclosure schedules been reviewed for
any contracts with change in control provisions
that will be triggered by the transaction and
require that a consent be obtained (or a
notice be provided) by the acquirer for the
contract’s assignment to be effective?
153. Has a form notice to customers and
request for consent been prepared by legal/
contract management and approved by
sales/marketing for distribution?
154. Are there contracts that require the acquirer
to procure consents that still need to be
obtained for assignment of contracts from
the acquired company to the acquirer?
155. Is someone charged with maintaining a
continuously updated list of contracts
that require consents to be obtained?
156. How will the contract management
process be merged?
157. Have the acquired company’s contract
management personnel been trained on
the use of the acquirer’s forms?
158. How will the acquired company’s contract files be
maintained and where will they be maintained?
159. Are there customer contract forms used
by the acquired company that should
replace forms used by the acquirer?
160. Are there changes to the form customer contracts
that need to be made due to the acquirer now doing
business in additional states or foreign jurisdictions
where local law requires such changes?
161. Do you need to bring in a temp paralegal to
handle notices and assignments required under the
acquired company’s agreements? Or is it realistic
to assign these tasks to current staff members?
Product licensing and sales162. Has a decision been made on which
company’s product licensing forms and
templates will be used going forward?
ACC Docket C11 November 2011
194. Do the limits and retention amounts of the
acquirer’s insurance need to be revised?
195. Is there transaction-specific litigation that
needs to be brought to the attention of
the insurance broker and the insurer?
196. Has the acquirer’s legal malpractice
insurance coverage been updated to
include the additional legal department
personnel from the acquired company?
197. Should any in-house counsel be covered
under the acquirer’s D&O insurance policy
(e.g., GC, deputy GC, corporate secretary,
assistant corporate secretaries, etc.)?
Corporate policies198. Have all of the acquired company employees
been made aware of the acquirer’s policies?
Have copies been distributed, either hard-copy
or via email, of the acquirer’s policies to ensure
compliance (e.g., code of conduct, Sarbanes-
Oxley Act, policy against harassment in the
workplace, insider trading, antitrust/competition,
revenue recognition, whistleblower, records
retention, foreign corrupt practices act, etc.)?
199. Is additional compliance training necessary for
the employees of the acquired company?
200. Has a click-through acknowledgement been
created for the website for the acquired
company employees to acknowledge that
they have read the acquirer’s policies?
ConclusionThe M&A world is littered with deals that have gone bad
because folks paid scant attention to the heavy lifting that
integration requires following the closing of any transaction.
We hope the 200 items that we have listed above will pro-
vide in-house counsel with a useful roadmap for planning
the integration of two legal departments post-acquisition,
and will contribute to not only a smooth transition, but also
an M&A transaction that has a better chance of being suc-
cessful due to a thoughtful integration strategy.
180. Has an in-house legal person been appointed as the
point person for this new regulatory regime? Or has
outside counsel been identified to handle this area?
Government sales and relations181. Does the acquisition affect the acquirer’s
government relations strategy?
182. Are additional state and/or federal
lobbying resources needed?
183. Does the GSA schedule need to be
amended to include the acquired company’s
products and price schedules?
184. Do security clearances need to be obtained by any
legal department personnel in connection with sales
to governmental agencies and instrumentalities?
185. Are there government entities, domestic and
overseas, where the relationship with the
acquired company could be improved?
Public relations186. Have the employees of the acquired
company been advised of the acquirer’s
communications policies and processes?
187. Has the press release boilerplate been
updated to include, among other things,
any additional forward-looking risk factors
and trademark attribution language?
Marketing 188. Have the marketing personnel of the
acquired company been briefed on the
acquirer’s process for vetting and approving
new brand names, trademarks and service
marks, and approving all product packaging
and the legal notices placed thereon?
189. Has the product packaging of the acquired
company’s products been reviewed to determine
changes that will need to be made?
190. Has the “style guide” been updated to
incorporate the acquired company’s products
and brands, and has the legal department
approved the revised “style guide”?
Insurance191. Has the acquirer’s insurance broker been
brought up to date on the transaction, and
provided with relevant information and required
notices with respect to the transaction?
192. Have the insurance policies of the acquired
company been converted to tail policies?
193. Is there additional insurance that needs to be
procured as a result of the acquisition?